Firaxis has announced Civilization IV. Visually, it looks like another Facebook-Civ, but apparently this is going to be a proper entry in the franchise.

Here's the feature list:

EXPANSIVE EMPIRES:
See the marvels of your empire spread across the map like never before. Each city spans multiple tiles so you can custom build your cities to take full advantage of the local terrain.

ACTIVE RESEARCH:
Unlock boosts that speed your civilization’s progress through history. To advance more quickly, use your units to actively explore, develop your environment, and discover new cultures.

DYNAMIC DIPLOMACY:
Interactions with other civilizations change over the course of the game, from primitive first interactions where conflict is a fact of life, to late game alliances and negotiations.

COMBINED ARMS:
Expanding on the “one unit per tile” design, support units can now be embedded with other units, like anti-tank support with infantry, or a warrior with settlers. Similar units can also be combined to form powerful “Corps” units.

ENHANCED MULTIPLAYER:
In addition to traditional multiplayer modes, cooperate and compete with your friends in a wide variety of situations all designed to be easily completed in a single session.

A CIV FOR ALL PLAYERS:
Civilization VI provides veteran players new ways to build and tune their civilization for the greatest chance of success. New tutorial systems introduce new players to the underlying concepts so they can easily get started.​

You can read more about Civ VI on the game's DLC shopSteam page. There's also an interview with designer Ed Beach on RPS.

I got a nice e-mail about medieval fantasy strategy game Wartile, so I figured I'd post about it somewhere. Looks cool, but not quite RPG-y enough for the Codex. Here's the run-down:

In the Viking Conquest campaign, players will get their first taste of the charming medieval fantasy universe we’ve been working on for years now. Collect and lead a group of Viking warriors through a series of battle boards forged by the Viking king’s desire to rule Scandinavia and England to write his place in history in blood.

KEY FEATURES

Take control of a band of miniature figurines as they come to life.

Engage in battles on gorgeous battle board dioramas with a true tabletop feel.

Play Godly and Tactical cards and change the course of the battle.

Experience a novel twist on the real time strategy genre!

Customize your units with weapons, armor & new abilities found throughout the game

Paradox just announced Stellaris, a sci-fi grand strategy game, during their Gamescom conference.

Here are the bullet points:

RICH INTERGALACTIC EXPLORATION
Something’s out there – and nobody knows what it is yet. Enormous, procedurally generated star systems ensure that every game will begin with a trip into the vast unknown, and the discovery of new worlds

ICONIC PARADOX DIPLOMACY AND STORYTELLING
Explore the stars as one of several playable races with unique traits and skills. Meet an incredible number of random species – all potential allies or emerging threats

Local Strategy Game expert and veteran potato farmer Darth Roxor has taken it upon himself to do a retrospective of the ever-controversial X-COM Apocalypse. But was it really as bad as people make it out to be? Let's see what he has to say.

Welcome to Mega-Primus. It’s a silly place.​

Hey! Do you know X-COM Apocalypse? Of course you do. It’s that bad rtwp game that killed the X-COM series and gave way to horrible games like Enforcer and Interceptor.

But a much more important question that I would like to ask you today is whether you have actually played Apocalypse. I suspect the most common answer to this will be “no”. I can’t say I blame you. After all, it took me over 15 years to gather the courage to do it myself. I was put off by so many things that I’d heard about it – that it was buggy, unstable, unfinished, nigh-impossible to run, outright bad, etc. For a longer while, I was even certain that it only featured rtwp combat, even though the turn-based mode is still there. But what I found suspicious was just how vague all of that sounded - it felt like Apocalypse was branded as a terrible game simply because it crashed a lot. So after figuring I might as well finally take the plunge, I picked it up at Gaben’s trinket shop (“hey, if it’s on Steam, that should mean it’s playable now!”) and once again took command of X-COM to stop the gosh darn aliens from stealing my freedoms. And I ended up glued to my computer for a whole month.

Klei's tactical espionage game Invisible, Inc. has been released on Steam and GOG earlier today, accompanied by a new trailer:

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In the comments to the trailer, the devs describe their game as "if FTL and XCOM had a baby that was raised by Mark of the Ninja and grew up playing Shadowrun." Whether that is accurate or not, you be the judge.

What must be the most pitched idea in computer game history has now been Officially Announced with a Cinematic Announcement Trailer.

Our rules have changed, and with change comes war on a scale as yet unimagined.

Gigantic monsters, flying creatures, legendary heroes and storms of magical power take their place on the battlefield, alongside thousands of warriors clashing in real-time tactical battles. All at YOUR command.

In the turn-based campaign game of statecraft & empire building, you will find the Old World an unforgiving and treacherous place, filled with endless war and cunning alliances alike. Whichever race you choose to play as and however you seek conquest, you will be faced with a conflict that threatens to tear the very fabric of reality asunder.​

Because the game features only four races – Empire, Greenskins, Dwarfs and Undead, fans of Warhammer are already raging hard as only scorned fanboys can. No gameplay footage released yet. Of course not.

Save to cloud box now remain checked if the loading was performed from a cloud save

Japanese garden for everyone

Added command line parameter "-limitfps x" to set a target fps

Mac/Linux: Fixed custom assets not loading due to an invalid PNG format.

Mac: Removed menu bar & docks in fullscreen mode

Asset Editor: the default size of assets created from templates now matches the template size if loading props

Asset Editor: fixed a case where the default textures may get corrupted and require to restart the game

Asset Editor: already placed props can now be moved around and rotated in place (respectively using the left and right mouse click) when no tools are selected

Asset Editor: fixed cases where LODs may not rotate with the building in the import panel

Steam workshop: Steam fixed the workshop not being showing when in offline mode in the latest Steam client release (24 Mar)

Locale: added LOADING text

Misc: fixed a case where command line arguments may conflict

Misc: removed an invalid key binding option

Misc: Added screenshot shortcuts to rebindable input (default is F12 for normal screenshot and shift+F12 for hi-res screenshot, also local screenshots now go to gameUserFolder/Screenshots) Steam screenshot feature is untouched and still the preferred method to take screenshots

Misc: Info views panel added to the Escape chain so the last Escape press will close the info views now

Misc: Save map does not show builtin and workshop maps any longer

UI: Fixed arrows sprites not showing feedback when interacted with

UI: Fixed color picker color not displaying in the right color space

No more duplicate name error for identical names coming from different packages

Paths can not be built inside elevated roads anymore

Elevated roads can now be upgraded or changed direction if one-ways

.ccs files displayed in red can now be selected in the load panel when trying to recover a failed save (when a save fails and attempt to preserve itself generating a .ccs file)

French localization improved

General audio improvements (should help address the sound stuttering issue with some sound cards)

Chess is an ancient game, long speculated to have originated in India but has travelled far and abroad with regional changes to it as it migrated. It's one of the most widespread board games and is considered by many to be a classic.

You can tell this was created by an old, white dude. It has no relevance to modern day narrative.

Gameplay:

Gameplay starts out somewhat fast but still dull. You move the pawns (Front pieces) forward one step at a time. Sometimes you can do two steps, this is a vain attempt to make things more interesting and strategic in early gameplay. Eventually you will be able to utilize the more powerful units at the back, but it's too little and too late.

If you capture the king the game ends. This results in end-game being a dull maneuvering game with lots of nothing going on. This game would be more interesting if it was real-time with pause.

The rules are also confusing. I thought I understood it all but then my friend who I was playing with did something he called "En Passant," in a very smug voice. I throat-punched him for that one.

Soundtrack:

Pieces make a nice tapping sound when you move them.

Replayability:

None. You can't choose your initial formation, something even games like Battleship allow you to do. There is no incentive to play again, it's always the same thing.

Summary:

Chess is an old game and it shows. In our modern age, we have a million more choices that are significantly more refined and as a result Chess is even more backwards. At best it's like a cheesy 50's sitcom, at worst it's a hate-mongering piece of shit.

Added faction abilities for the base factions and for any custom races you create. These are:

Engineers- Shipyard production does not decal with distance
Ancient- Precursor relics provide research
Patriotic- Immune to the Approval penalty from large empires
Starfaring- Starbases get the first module free and immune to nebula effects
Colonizers- Colonies get their first improvement for free
Unwavering- Colonies take twice as long to culture flip
Prolific- Colonies start with twice the population supplied by the Colony ship
Paranoid- Free drone defend planets, shipyards and starbases
Zealots- Gain an ideology point each time you invade a planet
Entrepreneurs- 2 extra Trade Routes and trade Routes generate an Approval bonus for both parties
Synthetic- Disable Food and natural Growth, instead an assembly project is used to produce citizens (was in Beta 4)
Intuitive- Starts with free Research
Unrelenting- Invasions never cost credits
Wealth- Starts with extra Credits and Tourism enabled
Adaptable- can colonize tier 1 extreme worlds
Knowledgeable- Starts knowing the location of other home worlds

Not long after the release of Total War: Attila, Creative Assembly has announced a faction pack. The Celt faction pack, as it suggests, adds Celtic factions and adds new features for them.

Playable for the first time in ATTILA, the Celtic tribes of the Ebdanians, Caledonians and Picts specialise in swift and deadly warfare. Every unit in the Celtic roster has the Guerrilla Deployment trait, enabling them to deploy almost anywhere on the battlefield – even behind enemy lines.

The Celts are a raiding, looting and sacking based culture type. Each faction benefits from its own unique traits, but all share Celtic cultural traits that vastly increase their income from these activities. An all-new Celtic roster is available for recruitment, alongside new units unique to each faction.

The next free update will be called EYE ON THE STARS, and will be released on March 18th. It contains the following features:

An improvement on diplomacy allowing you to ask an empire to declare war on another empire.

An integrated set of AI and Simulation tools, which allow you to browse through all the variables of an empire. Very useful for modders who want to understand what is going on. It allows you to switch between empires, so obviously this will be available in a special launch mode, to avoid multiplayer cheats.

The world generation is enriched with a system of presets, offering exotic continents layout: New World, Scattered, Symmetrical.

A Victory Quest has been added. Once you complete your main faction quest, you can attempt to achieve this quest to win the game (new victory condition). I will not give more details to allow you to discover this yourself.

A new outgame scene featuring the Drakkens has been added.

New Steam achievements have been added per G2G design and vote.

The Dorgeshi minor faction (G2G) has also been added.

6 new keyboard shortcuts as requested on the forum.

The first expansion pack will be released on April 16th and is named GUARDIANS, priced at 9.99€ (adapted to other currencies). It will contain the following elements:

15 Legendary Deeds completed at the various ages, granting a special advantage to the first empire to reach it.

5 Legendary buildings can now be built in your cities, only once for all empires. They have a special 3D visual on the city.

10 Unique buildings: when some Legendary Deeds are achieved, all empires may build these special buildings, one per city in your empire.

New Guardian mega-units. There are five of them, one for each element: Dust, Earth, Water, Air and Fire. They are built on a city and animated into a one man killer-army.

15 Guardian Weapons.

5 Guardian Gemstones (new accessory category).

5 Global quests! You can now play quests in cooperation or competition with other empires.